Author: admin

So apparently there was a poems under the dome event at city hall today where Laine read her poem. We asked her what it was about, she said Grampa’s glass eye.

Aro
Grandpa had a glass eye:
Concave shape, fog-over-the-ocean grey
(That grey was the color of his native land
like the cold winters I’ve read of in books
that seem to stay like a stubborn houseguests
I wonder if they ever made him miss home?)
and the whites the colors of pearls
kept in a strange box
(worn bronze, a small compartment kept closed by a clamp.)
on the mantle of our out-of-commission fireplace.
Somehow they caught him in that box
(like a firebug in a glass jar)
They caught the smell of mint candy and coffee,
the aura of old maps and older stories
the warmth of smiling eyes and experience.
They captured the warm plush chair in the living room
powdered doughnuts and tomato juice.
I saw in that eye memories of war
curious and wise.
Grandpa had a glass eye.
I found it a year after he died.
When I opened the box that held it,
I found a piece of him
as alive as me.